As I mentioned last week in my domain conference recap, one of the most popular topics that I found people discussing is the Chinese domain name market. As a result of this interest, George Hong, founder of the Guta.com domain brokerage, was often found engrossed in conversation with domain investors about the Chinese domain market.

Guta.com is a domain brokerage that is entrenched in the Chinese domain market. Here’s what the company’s website says about its involvement in the Chinese domain market:

“Our management team has extensive experience in both the US and China . We have a deep understanding of both Chinese and western cultures and almost 10 years of domain investment and consulting experience . We are well connected; we know and have worked with many of the key players in the global domain name industry. This unique combination of culture, backgrounds, talents, resources and experience make us an industry leading expert in connecting domain sellers from all over the world with Chinese buyers.”

Many people trust George’s opinion when it comes to domain names, and he has been involved in several large sales. For instance, his company reportedly brokered the recent sale of DD.com and was also reportedly involved in the sale of PPP.com. It was also reported that George was also instrumental in the sale of Beijing.com earlier this year.

I want to share a domain name sales report for the second and third quarters of 2015 that Guta.com shared at THE Domain Conference. The report pdf can be downloaded directly from the Guta.com website. The report covers a variety of domain name topics – from recent sales data to trends that are predicted by Guta. When I read the pamphlet at the conference, I asked George if I could share it with readers. He said yes, and he sent me the link to the pdf.

Although the report is part marketing material for the domain brokerage, I think there was some valuable information shared by the company. There is a market overview as well as detailed information about the current state of the market. I am not too familiar with the Chinese domain market besides what I read on forums and other blogs, so I try to read as much as I can from people I know others trust.

Thank you to George for sharing this information. I invite you to ask any questions you may have, and I will ask George to comment.

About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has sold seven figures worth of domain names in the last five years. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest.

Hi Elliot,
Thanks for the great write up and providing the opportunity to interact with your readers!

Hi Steve,
A very good question.
Yes, IMHO, CC, once marketed as “Chinese Companies” and “Commerces Companies”, is the third most popular extension(behind .com & .cn) in China. Like .com and .cn, .CC starts with a C. CC is simpler and easier to remember. It was operated by Verisign, hence Chinese investors and end users think it is as stable as .com. Many large companies, such as Oriental Daily(on.cc), choose to use .cc as their primary domain name. The relative high .cc domain registration and renewal fee is considered by many as a con of owning .cc domains. Recently Verisign ran a .cc promotion in China. This promotion, which lowered .cc new registration fee, sparked a new level of interest in .cc domains. As a direct result all 4 Letter .cc (without ‘a, e, i, o, u, v’) were all registered. Almost all (if not all) 5 number .cc domains were registered. Many good 6,7 even 8 number .cc domains were registered as well. The demand and wholesale market prices for short .cc names are higher than ever before.

No. 4 Letter (without â€˜a, e, i, o, u, vâ€™).com has been hot this year, but I don’t think there is a noticeable positive impact on names that has cc endings. example: xycc.com probably has similar value as xydd.com does.

Isn’t it weird that on one hand Chinese investors/buyers like CC due to English abbreviations of “Chinese Companiesâ€/â€œCommerces Companiesâ€, and on the other hand they are looking for “premium” letters (without â€˜a, e, i, o, u, vâ€™), because of pinyins? It’s a mix of Western and Chinese types.

cc was once marketed as â€œChinese Companiesâ€ and â€œCommerces Companiesâ€. but this is only one of the many reasons why cc is popular. We all know that Chinese investors prefer short and simple domains. It is tough to find a different extension that is as short and simple as .cc

Hi George,
Thanks for the reply!
“It was operated by Verisign, hence Chinese investors and end users think it is as stable as .com.”
Great point, I never thought of that. Verisign gives it some credibility. 🙂

I also think .cc could be used for the Crypto Currency market with all the new virtual currencies starting to appear.
Thanks for the info!!

“We all know that Chinese investors prefer short and simple domains. It is tough to find a different extension that is as short and simple as .cc”

I have been saying this for years, it’s the fastest extension you can type in the World. It’s nice to hear you confirm the obvious.
I am hoping with more people using mobile to access everything these short names are adopted by more than the Chinese market. Time will tell.

It’s more a marketing flyer, not a sales report. Basic parameters of a sales report is an average sale price and a number of transactions – I don’t see any of those information listed. Guta should check Domain Holdings sales reports to learn more.

On the other hand, I’m sure Guta is doing a good job and the knowledge of Chinese culture is a huge factor in such negotiations. I wish them a good luck and I hope we will hear from them more great news soon.

Hi Mike,
Thanks for the candid feedback and good luck wish!
I did check the domain holding sales reports and learned some ideas, including the marketing ideas :-), from them.
The first few iterations of our sales report, contain the total sale price and other detailed transaction info.
However one of our reviewers suggested us to remove those information. The concern was that several of our large translations are currently under NDA, Releasing those information might do our clients a disservice as people might be able to use the reported info to guess sale price ranges of those transaction. To protect our client’s best interest, we made a tough decision to remove those information from the sales report.

I would sell more to investors that are located outside of this country. I mean if you have Chinese Foreign Nationals etc wanting to give you money for your registration and nobody including your goverment looks at you like your the weirdo because your trying to sell them on this thing called the internet.

What about lets register all geo domains for asian i use to have some through me and or other entities that I may or may not have controlled before yeah up s.

Say one last time to your good ole boys hey i think this pure geo is a good match for our municipality want to work something out since nobody will remember your .gov longer version so do that or get a real estate license its tit.

Alright FOLLOW THIS Get your RE License. Grab a PURE GEO DOMAIN if you can if not then whatever but get the pure your city town dot com now walk into every broker you are the queen or king ok. Your like better thank the big drug dealer your flipping houses legally. You command respect just being you, you will get gifts presents people to do shit for you its like selling drugs per research suggest anyway you get licensed; you go into every realator that has a yellow pages display ad in your local community. You explain to them your plain and you work out the kinks until you nail it as you keep knocking these brokers off the list. Now if they are jonesing you you can tell they are begging so you don’t need my help but youll get there so say they don’t beg at first then say you select one because you live around a bunch of super old and idiotic people in the woods somewhere with little hope then oh well move and re read this. Anyway you decide which office you want to have your real estate sales person paper at for x many years until you can get your broker license and become your own broker and hire agents so you set up shop where you want and now you take over the freaking office you will be the talk of the office people will start giving you shit and you will become more popular if you want. Play with that. Alternatively you can be a shut in and just handle leads and get a legal cut as opposed to a FSBO Classified listing fee.

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